Saturday, October 30, 2010

Lunch with the FT: Bill Gates

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/67672314-e2e0-11df-9735-00144feabdc0.html


".......But Gates is also worried about the environment, so I ask him if the rapid industrialisation of China is a recipe for environmental disaster. Again, his impulse is to look to technology for a solution: “Short of going to war over this issue, the best way would be to find innovative forms of energy generation”. He is excited by solar and nuclear energy, and mocks those who complain about rising Chinese energy use – “I mean, these Chinese are actually using as much energy per capita as the average in the world today, how dare they! How did that happen? The US uses four times the average and the Brits double. But now these Chinese are trying to use the average.”........"

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Britain a ‘nation of digital shopkeepers’

This story is particularly rewarding to see:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a7b635f8-e200-11df-a064-00144feabdc0.html

Britain has become a “nation of digital shopkeepers”, with the internet industry as a whole now the fifth-largest contributor to gross domestic product, according to a report.

even if it was almost 15 year ago that I was involved in leading the charge:

http://www.microsoft.com/misc/features/features_eChristmas.htm

"This project was a chance for European businesses to roll up their sleeves and do something with electronic commerce, rather than just sit around and hypothesize," Horslen said. "These are pioneering days."

Thursday, October 21, 2010

BBC News - Mexican student given police chief role

This one student Id really want on my team!

BBC News - Mexican student given police chief role

".....More than 28,000 people have been died in Mexico in drug-related violence since 2006, when the government began deploying troops to combat the cartels. ....."

I wonder what the US and European drug taking community can do to help her and the mexican people? Stop!!!

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Mass Localism - discuss!

For Green, social and economic reasons 2010+ will see......

*The adoption of a mass localism approach could create

a virtuous circle of effective local action, with greater

impact and savings encouraging a greater emphasis on

locally developed and delivered solutions. The way to resolve

the current concerns over the efficacy of localism is to generate

much more of it, not limit it, and to do so in a systematic way.

.............

Advances in digital communication technologies and the trend

towards more distributed production in other parts of the

economy provide an opportunity for this approach to be much

more widespread. Where previously local solutions faced limits

in their capacity to scale and share experience nationally, now

the tools for leveraging greater impact from local approaches

are more widely available."

http://www.nesta.org.uk/library/documents/MassLocalism_Feb2010.pdf

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Digging thru the archive

Within this blog of the past 5 or 6 years there are still some gems you might not see from a flick or scroll through, so feel free to use the search box above which with terms like these below will deliver selected articles:



Economic http://nickhorslen.blogspot.com/search?q=economic

Entrepreneur http://nickhorslen.blogspot.com/search?q=entrepreneur
Eco http://nickhorslen.blogspot.com/search?q=eco
GAIA http://nickhorslen.blogspot.com/searchh?q=gaia
Social
http://nickhorslen.blogspot.com/search?q=social


etc
etc

If you click on any of these links it will return this article but with a list of different articles below it, scroll down now....

Please post comments if the blog proves interesting!

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

FT.com / Technology - Google to invest in wind power

FT.com / Technology - Google to invest in wind power

Leadership, inspired:

"....

Google said it will make a large-scale investment to harness offshore wind power in a move that shows the search giant continues to diverge from its core business.

The company said that it would join forces with Good Energies and Japan’s Marubeni Corporation to finance the project that will create miles of underwater cables to transport energy from wind farms to US cities. Trans-Elect, an independent transmission company, will lead the project and Google is investing in 37.5 per cent of the equity for the initial development of the project.!

......"

Monday, October 11, 2010

Trio shares Nobel prize for economics

FT.com / Global Economy - Trio shares Nobel prize for economics

"As the world struggles to recover from the financial crisis, the Nobel prize for economics has been awarded to three researchers whose work explains how market frictions can hinder the smooth functioning of the economy and its ability to adjust to shocks.

The laureates – Peter Diamond, Dale Mortenson and Christopher Pissarides – have made fundamental contributions to understanding how supply and demand are matched when there are transactions or search costs involved.

Their “search and matching” theories show that it is not enough to have buyers and sellers who can in principle agree on a price; those buyers and sellers must also find each other and decide to enter into a transaction rather than hold out for a better match. "

Friday, October 08, 2010

Futurists view on transport for 2040 timescales

This post is someone elses from a forum i follow, it shows the value of social media AND futurists thinking, much of which i aspire to in the sort of things i choose to post on the blog. Excuse the plagiarism, as we know 99% of stuff posted on the web is not original thinking, but we keep trying:

Brian PomeroyWe futurists sure love flying cars! I don't know if we'll see them by 2040, but we may see some of these transportation concepts instead:

"Pod cars" proposed by GM for congested cities (think souped-up Segways):
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/03/general-motors-en-v

A perpetually moving bullet train that picks up and drops off whole passenger compartments:
http://softhunder.blogspot.com/2010/04/train-that-never-stops-at-station.html

From China, a straddling bus/train that rides overtop auto traffic:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/02/3d-express-coach-pictures_n_667452.html

"SkyTran", a zero-emission mag-lev monorail that uses individual cars, proposed for Los Angeles:
http://www.unimodal.com/PlaySkytran.html

Many of these innovations will be driven from a future in which fossil fuels are increasingly scarce:
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/feature/2009/09/24/oil/index.html